Festival & fair management software, ranked
Every platform at a glance first, then what each one is actually like to buy and use. Click a name to jump to its review.
| # | Platform | Score | Published price | Festival map | CRM depth | Offline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | FestivalPro | 8.5 | Moderate $600–$5,040/yr across 5 tiers + Custom, + 2% fee all tiers | Basic markers, no GPS | Deep | Unknown |
| 2 | Eventeny | 7.6 | 3–5% platform fee on tickets, applications, sponsors + Stripe | Static illustrated layout, no GPS | Vendor/volunteer/sponsor | Unknown |
| 3 | Leap / Greencopper | 7.5 | Quote-only Quote only (apps); Ticketleap $1 + 2% cap $20 | Interactive venue maps | Via Marcato | Offline-first by design |
| 4 | ClearEvent | 7.3 | Moderate $895 / $1,795 / $2,995 per yr + 2.35% + $0.70/ticket (cap $15) | None | Broad | Not applicable |
| 5 | Appmiral (CM.com) | 7.2 | Expensive €375 / €625 / €935 per mo, annual. Map only at €935 (~€11.2K/yr). | Interactive map, top tier only | No | Yes |
| 6 | Event Essentials | 6.8 | Moderate ~$450/yr est. + $1K–$7K onboarding est. Modular, quote-only. | None yet (listed as coming) | Modular | Not applicable |
| 7 | Eventbase | 6.4 | Very expensive Quote only; self-declared $5K–$50K+ | Indoor blue-dot navigation (premium tier) | No | Yes |
| 8 | Aloompa (WMT Digital) | 6.1 | Quote-only Quote only | GPS pins as a paid upgrade | No | Partial |
| 9 | EventHub | 5.0 | Moderate $0 + 10% GMV (A La Carte) · $997 / $3,735 / $4,990 per yr token plans | Organizer-side floor plans only | Vendor/sponsor only | Not applicable |
Before you compare: how to judge a festival map
Almost every platform on this list says it "supports maps." The differences hide in the details, and they are worth checking on a demo before you sign anything:
- Is it a live map or a picture? Several platforms here "support maps" by letting you upload an image. If there is no moving dot showing an attendee where they are, it is a picture.
- What happens when you tap a pin? On most festival maps, a marker shows the location’s name and nothing else. A map starts earning its keep when a pin opens into something useful: who is playing, what a vendor sells, photos, set times.
- Who types in the data? Every platform in this ranking hands you an empty system. Budget the staff hours to enter each band bio, photo, and booth listing by hand.
- Is the map included, or an upsell? Across this list the interactive map is a paid module, a top-tier gate, or missing entirely. Check which tier yours actually arrives at.
1. FestivalPro 8.5/10
Best for: The deepest back-office: vendors, volunteers, artists, ticketing
festivalpro.com · Pricing: $600–$5,040/yr across 5 tiers + Custom, + 2% fee all tiers
FestivalPro is the operations workhorse of this list. If your festival runs on vendor applications, volunteer shifts, artist advancing, and accreditation, this is the most complete toolset you can buy, and it’s trusted by 600+ events. Just go in knowing the sticker price isn’t the whole price, and the "map" is an image you upload, not a live map.
- The deepest festival CRM feature set in the category: vendors, volunteers, contractors, artists, accreditation, forms, and contracting in one system
- Pricing is published: $600–$5,040/yr across five tiers
- Ticket money flows straight to your own Stripe or PayPal, with no processing markup
- A white-label branded attendee app is available as a premium option
- The map is a basic marker view: tap a pin and you get the location’s name, nothing more. No GPS wayfinding, and no band, food, or vendor detail behind the pin
- A 2% fee applies on every tier, and meters add up: storage by the GB, email caps, and support tickets that cost money
- Every artist bio and photo is typed in by hand, and API access is a paid add-on on the top two tiers
Bottom line: The one to beat for festival operations. Price out the 2% fee and the meters for your event size before you compare stickers.
2. Eventeny newer entrant 7.6/10
Best for: Craft fairs and markets that want a low upfront cost
eventeny.com · Pricing: 3–5% platform fee on tickets, applications, sponsors + Stripe
Eventeny is growing fast in craft fairs and artisan markets with an easy pitch: start on a modest plan, manage vendors, volunteers, and sponsors, and lay out your grounds with its map maker. The trade is a 3–5% platform fee on nearly everything that moves (tickets, vendor applications, sponsorships), plus payment processing, which some vendor communities have pushed back on publicly. And know what the map maker is: a tool for drawing an illustrative booth layout, closer to designing a printable map than to giving attendees an interactive one.
- Low barrier to entry next to the big annual suites
- Covers vendor applications, volunteers, sponsors, and basic booth maps in one place
- A vendor marketplace brings some demand with it
- 3–5% platform fee on tickets, vendor applications, and sponsorships, plus Stripe fees
- The map maker outputs a static illustrated layout: no GPS, no attendee wayfinding, no real site geometry, and reviewers find the drawing tools limited
- Reviewers cite clunky volunteer approvals, and vendor communities have publicly criticized fees at previously free events
Bottom line: Cheap to start, but model the percentage fees at your real volume before committing a large event to it.
3. Leap / Greencopper 7.5/10
Best for: Festivals that want a battle-tested offline-first app (and ticketing with it)
leapevent.tech · Pricing: Quote only (apps); Ticketleap $1 + 2% cap $20
Greencopper, now part of Leap, built its festival app offline-first on purpose, because festival grounds have terrible signal. It shows: 300+ events across 26 countries run on it, and it has the most complete sponsor inventory in the category, from sponsored map pins to push campaigns, with the organizer keeping the revenue. The app increasingly comes bundled with Leap’s ticketing stack, which is where the real business is.
- Offline-first by architecture: the map and schedule work with no signal
- Interactive venue maps included
- The most explicit sponsor inventory in the category (sponsored pins, headers, push), and you keep the money
- App pricing is quote-only
- The app is a doorway to the ticketing bundle (ShowClix / Ticketleap per-ticket fees)
- Little back-office CRM beyond artist advancing via Marcato
Bottom line: The offline benchmark. Just understand you may be buying a ticketing relationship, not only an app.
4. ClearEvent 7.3/10
Best for: Back-office depth for community events & nonprofits
clearevent.com · Pricing: $895 / $1,795 / $2,995 per yr + 2.35% + $0.70/ticket (cap $15)
ClearEvent has the cleanest pricing model in event management software: three tiers that differ only by how many events you run at once, with every feature in every tier and unlimited organizer accounts. It’s a back-office platform through and through, strongest at registrations, budgeting, schedules, and the spreadsheet-style data work that keeps a community event organized. What it isn’t is attendee-facing: there is no map of any kind, no app, and a per-ticket fee rides on top of the subscription.
- Simplest pricing in the category: $895 / $1,795 / $2,995 per year, every feature in every tier
- Unlimited event-manager users at no extra cost
- Solid back-office basics: registrations, budgets, schedules, vendors, volunteers, and clean event data
- Nothing attendee-facing: no festival map of any kind, no app, and no wayfinding on the roadmap they publish
- 2.35% + $0.70 per paid ticket (capped at $15) on top of the subscription and Stripe’s own fees
- No API, and their own reviewers ask for booth layout maps and floor plans
Bottom line: A capable, predictable back office. Just know your attendees will never see any of it.
5. Appmiral (CM.com) 7.2/10
Best for: European music festivals that want a polished attendee app
appmiral.com · Pricing: €375 / €625 / €935 per mo, annual. Map only at €935 (~€11.2K/yr).
Appmiral powers the attendee apps at Tomorrowland and Rock Werchter, and unlike most app vendors it publishes its prices: €375–€935 per month, billed annually. The app is genuinely good, with offline support and sponsor tooling backed by real ROI dashboards. But the interactive map only exists on the top tier, which works out to roughly €11,200 a year before your attendees see a map.
- Proven at the biggest festivals in Europe (Tomorrowland, Rock Werchter)
- Published pricing: rare among attendee-app vendors
- Strong sponsor playbook (splash screens, map POIs, push, ROI dashboards), and the organizer keeps the sponsor revenue
- The interactive festival map is gated to the top tier (~€11.2K/yr)
- Usage metering: overage charges past 50,000 monthly active users
- No back-office tools: no vendor, volunteer, or sponsor management workflows
Bottom line: A first-class festival app with transparent pricing. Budget for the top tier if the map is why you’re buying.
6. Event Essentials 6.8/10
Best for: US fairs and county festivals that want a modular suite
event-essentials.net · Pricing: ~$450/yr est. + $1K–$7K onboarding est. Modular, quote-only.
Event Essentials has spent 15+ years serving US fairs and is the closest thing to a county fair software incumbent. Everything is modular: ticketing, vendor management, sponsors, volunteers, talent, auctions, even text-voting. Everything is also quote-only: the vendor publishes no prices at all, and third-party estimates put onboarding at $1,000–$7,000 before you start.
- Deep fair-specific coverage: vendors, sponsors, volunteers, talent, auctions, POS, merch
- 15+ years in US fairs and festivals, so the workflows fit how fairs actually run
- Modular à la carte: buy only the pieces you need
- No published pricing anywhere. Estimates are ~$450/yr plus $1K–$7K onboarding, by phone quote only
- The interactive map has been "coming" per their own reviewers
- Custom-field reports have to be requested through customer service
Bottom line: A fair-management veteran. Get the full quote, including onboarding, in writing before comparing.
7. Eventbase 6.4/10
Best for: Enterprise brands and city-scale events with enterprise budgets
eventbase.com · Pricing: Quote only; self-declared $5K–$50K+
Eventbase is the enterprise tier: SXSW, global brands like IBM and SAP, indoor blue-dot navigation, and an AI concierge (eventCopilot) that answers attendee questions. It is priced like what it is. The company’s own article puts platform cost at $5,000 to upwards of $50,000, with implementations that run around three months.
- Enterprise pedigree: SXSW, IBM, SAP, Cisco
- Blue-dot indoor navigation (licensed from Pointr) and offline support
- eventCopilot AI concierge is a real shipping feature, not a demo
- $5K–$50K+ by their own published numbers, with implementations that take about three months
- 3D maps are gated to the Premium edition; onsite and 24/7 support cost extra on both editions
- No festival CRM: vendors, volunteers, and sponsors live elsewhere
Bottom line: If you have an enterprise budget and an indoor venue, it delivers. Regional outdoor festivals are not who this is for.
8. Aloompa (WMT Digital) 6.1/10
Best for: Big US festivals that want the original festival app
wmt.digital · Pricing: Quote only
Aloompa built the first festival app ever (Bonnaroo, 2009) and still runs Summerfest and X Games. It pioneered food order-ahead (LiveOrder) and geofenced sponsor offers. Since the 2024 acquisition by WMT Digital, published pricing has disappeared and the company’s focus has visibly shifted toward college and pro sports.
- The longest track record in festival apps (Bonnaroo, Summerfest, X Games)
- F&B order-ahead exists (LiveOrder), with a claimed 30–40% consumption lift
- Geofenced sponsor offers and contests
- GPS maps are a paid upgrade above the static-map baseline
- No published pricing since the WMT acquisition; every price is a quote
- Post-acquisition attention is drifting toward sports properties
Bottom line: Deep festival DNA, but you’ll quote blind, and the map you want is an upsell.
9. EventHub 5.0/10
Best for: Organizers whose business is booths and sponsorships
eventhub.net · Pricing: $0 + 10% GMV (A La Carte) · $997 / $3,735 / $4,990 per yr token plans
EventHub comes at festival management from the money side: vendor and sponsor logistics plus a marketplace of roughly 50,000 buyers shopping for booth space and sponsorships. The free plan takes 10% of everything you sell through it; paid plans run up to $4,990/yr. There’s no attendee app or festival map: floor plans are an organizer-side tool.
- A real marketplace of ~50,000 booth and sponsorship buyers, unique in this list
- Solid vendor and sponsor logistics: applications, documents, payments
- A $0 entry plan exists if you accept the revenue share
- The free plan costs 10% of all booth and sponsorship sales (card processing included)
- No attendee experience at all: no app, no public map
- Plan prices live in the terms of service, and the live floor-plan upgrade is a separate paid per-event license
Bottom line: Worth it if the marketplace sells even a few booths for you. Do the 10% math against a subscription first.
Festival software feature comparison chart
Every platform, every feature we track, one chart. Hover a feature name for what it means.
● Full ◐ Partial ○ Announced — Not offered ? Unverified
| Feature | FestivalPro | Eventeny | Leap | ClearEvent | Appmiral | Event Essentials | Eventbase | Aloompa | EventHub |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ops CRM | |||||||||
| Vendor management + portal | ● | ● | — | ● | — | ● | — | — | ● |
| Volunteer management | ● | ● | — | ● | — | ● | — | — | — |
| Volunteer scheduling that doesn't hurt | ◐ | — | — | ◐ | — | ◐ | — | — | — |
| Sponsor management | ● | ● | — | ● | — | ● | — | — | ● |
| Band / artist management | ● | — | ◐ | ◐ | — | ● | — | — | — |
| Comp-ticket / guest-list workflow | ? | — | ◐ | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Map & wayfinding | |||||||||
| Interactive GPS map (outdoor) | — | ◐ | ● | — | ◐ | ○ | ◐ | ◐ | — |
| Depth behind the pin (enriched profiles) | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| The map fills itself (auto-population) | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Offline maps / cached tiles | ? | — | ● | — | ● | — | ● | ◐ | — |
| Organizer site planning (to-scale) | — | ◐ | — | — | — | — | — | — | ◐ |
| Indoor positioning / beacons | — | — | — | — | — | — | ◐ | — | — |
| Monetization surfaces | |||||||||
| Map analytics instrumentation | — | — | — | — | ◐ | — | ◐ | — | — |
| Sponsored pins / paid placement inventory | — | ◐ | ● | — | ● | — | ● | ◐ | ◐ |
| Vendor lead capture (sold to vendors) | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Sponsor / vendor ROI analytics & reports | — | — | — | — | ◐ | — | ◐ | — | — |
| Embedded payments on vendor / booth fees | ◐ | ● | — | ◐ | — | ? | — | — | ● |
| Buyer marketplace (booth / sponsorship demand) | — | ◐ | — | — | — | — | — | — | ● |
| Platform & AI | |||||||||
| Open API below enterprise tier | ◐ | — | — | — | ◐ | ? | — | — | ? |
| MCP / agent-accessible data | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| AI concierge (attendee Q&A) | — | — | — | — | — | — | ● | — | — |
| Conversational organizer analytics | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Attendee & commerce | |||||||||
| Ticketing | ● | ● | ● | ● | ◐ | ● | — | — | — |
| Gamification passport | — | — | ◐ | — | — | — | ◐ | ◐ | — |
| F&B order-ahead / in-app ordering | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | ● | — |
| White-label branded app | ◐ | — | ● | — | ● | — | ● | ● | — |
| Published transparent pricing | ● | ◐ | — | ● | ● | — | — | — | ◐ |
Interactive event map & site-planning tools worth knowing
These aren’t festival management platforms, but they come up in every search for festival map software and event map makers. Here’s where each one actually fits.
OnePlan Site planning
To-scale site planning on satellite maps (barriers, tents, toilets, road closures, CAD import), used by 100,000+ events including Paris 2024. No attendee-facing map or app; it’s the organizer’s drawing board. Free tier; Pro $99/mo.
ExpoFP Expo floor plans
The interactive floor-plan standard for expos and trade shows, with the most openly published price book in mapping: DIY from $149/mo by booth count, drawn-for-you maps $1.5K–$4.8K, indoor positioning $8.5K–$25K+. Built for exhibit halls, not festival grounds.
Attractions.io Theme-park apps
True GPS routing in a polished attendee app, built for permanent venues. Pricing is quote-only and sized to a year-round attraction, which is why festivals rarely sign it.
Mappedin Indoor mapping infrastructure
Developer infrastructure for indoor maps (free–$165 per map/mo, enterprise by square foot). You build on it; it isn’t an event product by itself.
Pointr Indoor positioning infrastructure
Beacon-based indoor blue-dot positioning: the technology inside Eventbase’s maps. Site surveys, hardware, and multi-week deployments put it firmly in enterprise territory.
Where Eventbrite & general ticketing platforms fit
Most festivals don’t start with festival management software. They start with a general ticketing platform: Eventbrite, Ticketmaster, or a regional equivalent sells the tickets, promotes the event to its audience, and handles payment. For a young festival that’s often the right call: the audience reach is real and the setup cost is close to zero. (One easy mix-up worth flagging: Eventbrite, the ticketing platform, and Eventbase, the enterprise event app ranked above, are one letter apart and entirely different products.)
What these platforms don’t do is run the festival. There is no vendor application workflow, no volunteer scheduling, no sponsor fulfillment, and no festival map: those jobs end up in spreadsheets, email threads, and a folder of PDFs. Every platform ranked above exists to absorb exactly that work, and pairs with (or replaces) the ticketing layer.
Watch the costs as you grow. Per-ticket fees stack with payment processing on every sale, organizers publicly describe fee levels that leave events "barely profitable" and payout holds that strain cash flow, and an entire challenger tier (Ticket Tailor, TicketSpice, Zeffy) now competes on flat pricing for exactly that reason. And running vendors, volunteers, and sponsors in spreadsheets alongside a ticketing account is the rational way to start; most festivals do. The moment to look at the platforms above is when keeping those spreadsheets in sync starts costing more hours than software would.
Festival & fair software: frequently asked questions
What is the best festival management software in 2026?
FestivalPro leads for back-office depth (vendor management, volunteers, artists, ticketing), with published pricing of $600–$5,040/yr plus a 2% fee. For the simplest honest pricing, ClearEvent ($895–$2,995/yr, every feature in every tier). For a polished attendee app with an interactive map, Appmiral, if the top tier fits your budget. No single platform today combines a deep festival CRM with a true interactive GPS map at a mid-market price.
How much does festival management software cost?
Mid-market platforms run roughly $450–$5,040 per year, and most add fees on top: FestivalPro charges 2% on every tier, ClearEvent 2.35% + $0.70 per ticket, Eventeny 3–5% on tickets and vendor applications, and EventHub’s free plan takes 10% of booth and sponsorship sales. Enterprise attendee apps are another tier entirely: Eventbase’s own published range is $5,000 to $50,000+.
Which festival apps have a real interactive GPS map?
Fewer than the marketing suggests. In the operations tier, none: FestivalPro links static images, ClearEvent has no map, Event Essentials lists one as coming. Among attendee apps, the map is usually gated: Aloompa sells GPS as a paid module, Appmiral’s interactive map only exists on its top tier (~€11.2K/yr), and Eventbase’s blue-dot navigation (via Pointr) sits in its premium enterprise edition. Leap/Greencopper includes interactive venue maps in its offline-first app.
Which festival software charges percentage fees?
Most of them, somewhere: FestivalPro adds 2% on every tier; ClearEvent charges 2.35% + $0.70 per paid ticket (capped at $15); Eventeny takes 3–5% on tickets, vendor applications, and sponsorships; EventHub’s free plan takes 10% of booth and sponsorship sales. Fees like these routinely exceed the subscription price for a mid-size event, so run the math at your volume.
What software do county fairs and community festivals use?
The fair management field is led by Event Essentials (15+ years in US fairs, modular, quote-only), ClearEvent (community events and nonprofits, published tiers), Eventeny (craft fairs and markets, fee-based), and FestivalPro (full festival CRM). Most fairs still run maps as a PDF. Interactive fair maps remain the category’s biggest gap.
What’s the difference between an event app and festival management software?
Festival management software (FestivalPro, ClearEvent, Event Essentials) runs the office: vendor applications, volunteer shifts, sponsors, contracts, ticketing. An event app (Aloompa, Appmiral, Greencopper, Eventbase) is what attendees hold: schedule, lineup, map, push notifications. Almost nobody does both well, which is why many festivals end up paying for one of each.
What happened to BusyEvent and Hopscotch?
Both are gone. BusyEvent shut down and its domain is for sale. Hopscotch closed, and its old domain now hosts an unrelated financial software company. If either is still on your shortlist from an old article, cross it off.
What should a good festival map app actually include?
Four things separate a real festival map from a picture: a live map with a moving position dot (not an uploaded image); pins that open into real detail like who is playing, what a vendor sells, photos, and set times, rather than just a location name; data that does not all have to be typed in by hand; and the map included in the price rather than sold as a module or top-tier gate. Today no festival management platform delivers all four, which is worth knowing before a demo.
How we score
Every platform is scored on five dimensions, each 0–10, computed from a structured feature-by-feature dataset we re-verify against vendor pricing pages, documentation, and public reviews (last pass: 2026-08-23):
- Ops & CRM (30%): vendor management, volunteers, sponsors, artist management, guest lists.
- Maps & wayfinding (30%): shipping any map at all earns a base; interactive GPS, content depth behind the pins, offline support, and site planning build on it.
- Attendee experience (20%): ticketing, branded apps, engagement features.
- Monetization & analytics (10%): sponsored placement, lead capture, ROI reporting, and marketplaces that help the organizer earn. (Core sponsor management is scored under Ops & CRM.)
- Pricing transparency & fees (10%): published prices score up; percentage fees and usage meters score down.
The overall score maps the weighted composite onto the band the category currently occupies: 5.0 to 8.5. The room above the band is deliberate: across this list, deep back-office tools tend to pair with a thin event-goer experience and vice versa, and we score against the rising bar on both sides, not just against the field. One rule governs everything here: we don’t grade what we can’t check. A capability we can’t verify for a specific vendor is marked unknown, and a dimension we lack the depth to score fairly is left out rather than guessed. Where a vendor publishes no price, we say so rather than guess. Corrections are welcome: email us and we’ll re-verify.
Price tiers in the table reflect typical effective annual cost for a mid-size event: Budget under $500 · Moderate $500–$4K · Expensive $4K–$10K · Very expensive $10K+ · Fee-based when percentage fees are the real price · Quote-only when no price is published.